SERIES VS SERIAL

My first book, Social Insecurity, which is about to launch, is the first in a series. Or is it? Not really. It is the beginning of a serial. Back in the day, long before even I was born, authors wrote serials. Some classics we still read today, began life as a multi part serial. So I am doing something new, that is actually very old.

I belong to many readers and writers groups and there is one thing we all complain about in the genre we all love so well, cozy mysteries, and that is repetition. The reason for that is each book is supposed to stand alone. So if you come across volume seven in a cozy series you have never seen before, you can pick it up and read it, and know everything. You’ll hear everything about each character’s background, their relationships, their profession, their craft or hobby. And at the end, the story is wrapped up in a neat little bow.

But the fact is, if you start a series at the beginning, by book three, you are skimming over those parts. You have heard it all before. Again and again.

So I took a chainsaw to Social Insecurity. I took out about twenty thousand words an editor had wanted in. Because they weren’t needed. You may learn a lot about one character and his character, because he is a suspect, but little about another because in this particular story it is not important to the tale at hand. You will get a lot of description of the protagonist, Brigid’s, living arrangements for example. But you will never hear about it again in subsequent books. So picking up book seven, never having read one through six, you could be confused.

And there is no neat bow at the end. Oh the mystery is solved. You know whodunit and why and how. But you have a cliff hanger which leads you right into book two, Meditated Murder. So this series is really a serial that must be read from the beginning, in order. It will say that in the front of book two onward. It will say it on Amazon. But people, even people who read, never really read the directions, the instructions, the helpful hints. But you have read this. So now you know, and hopefully understand. The Brigid Kildare Mystery Series is something old that is new again. It is a serial.

(And if you want to read the paperback version before the whole formal launch, you can buy it here: https://www.createspace.com/4045333 )